Ringo Starr (Sir Richard Starkey)
English musician, singer, songwriter Ringo Starr gained worldwide fame as
the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including "With a Little Help from My
Friends", "Yellow Submarine", "Good Night", and their cover of "Act Naturally".
ROSS SIMPSON
From left: John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
The front-page headline of the Liverpool Evening Express on July 6, 1957,
read “MERSEYSIDE SIZZLES,” in reference to the heat wave then gripping
not just northern England, but all of Europe. The same headline could well
have been used over a story that received no coverage at all that day: The
story of the first encounter between two Liverpool teenagers named John
Lennon and Paul McCartney. Like the personal and professional relationship
it would lead to, their historic first meeting was a highly charged combination
of excitement, rivalry and mutual respect.
It’s easy to assume that John and Paul would eventually have met on some
other day had a mutual friend not chosen that hot and humid Saturday to
make the introduction. But as much as they had in common, the two boys
lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools and were nearly
two years apart in age.
Only John was scheduled to perform publicly on July 6, 1957. The occasion
was the annual Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, a parade and outdoor
fair at which John and his Quarrymen Skiffle Group had been invited to play.
SANDY KOZEL
An artists depiction of the incident.
In the Persian Gulf on this day in 1988, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes
shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile Iranian
fighter aircraft. Two missiles were fired from the American warship–the
aircraft was hit, and all 290 people aboard were killed. The attack came
near the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. vessels were in the gulf
defending Kuwaiti oil tankers. Minutes before Iran Air Flight 655 was
shot down, the Vincennes had engaged Iranian gunboats that shot at
its helicopter.
Iran called the downing of the aircraft a “barbaric massacre,” but U.S.
officials defended the action, claiming that the aircraft was outside the
commercial jet flight corridor, flying at only 7,800 feet, and was on a
descent toward the Vincennes. However, one month later, the United
States acknowledged that the airbus was in the commercial flight
corridor, flying at 12,000 feet, and not descending. The U.S. Navy
report blamed crew error caused by psychological stress on men
who were in combat for the first time. In 1996, the U.S. agreed to pay
$62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians killed in the attack.
CAMILLE BOHANNON
During the U.S. Civil War, the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg began
on this day in 1863 between Union and Confederate forces.The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war, often
described as the war’s turning point.
The battle was fought near the southern border of Pennsylvania in
and around the town of Gettysburg.
CAMILLE
BOHANNON
On this day in 1994, the U.S. Figure Skating Association stripped
Tonya Harding of the 1994 national championship and banned her
from the organization for life for an attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.
Tonya Maxene Price (Harding) will be 49 in November. She was
born in Portland, Oregon.
